Spider Jack Preview

Spider Jack swinging onto the App Store this Spring

Wouldn’t you know it? You just woke up and you’re starving. Not only that, but there’s no food in the house. That means it’s time to drop on down to your web, and grab the fly you managed to catch, and cook it up like a Thanksgiving turkey. Oh, in case you’re wondering: you’re a spider, and you’re starring in Chillingo’s new game Spider Jack.

It seems that the best way to describe Spider Jack is that it’s a combination of a platform adventure title and The Incredible Machine, with some Halloween-friendly graphics thrown in for good measure. Players control the titular character as he falls down and/or floats up through various maps. To get to the fly caught in his web, the character can use webs as ziplines to reposition himself (which are then cut in order for him to continue) and avoid environmental hazards. Along the way, the spider can also collect stars as he drifts towards his insect meal.

The game looks pretty cute. It’s got some fairly adorable graphics, and the background imagery changes up the settings: gamers will get to play through environments like abandoned barns and mad science labs. Maxnick has promised high-definition graphics for the Retina display and the iPad.

Developer Maxnick has also promised that the game will allow players to “gift levels” to their friends, though this has yet to be explained in great detail. Presumably this means that players will be able to create custom levels and then share them with friends/community members (though this is just pure speculation on our part). Maxnick has also promised a steady stream of new levels after the game launches; that is, of course, on top of the 75 levels the game will ship with.

Spider Jack doesn’t have an official release date yet, but it looks like the game is pretty far through the production cycle, so expect to see it in the App Store sometime soon.